Judge rules against ‘intelligent design’

[Believer]

Judge rules against 'intelligent design'
'Religious alternative' to evolution cannot be taught in public school classes

CLICK HERE.

And they still have it wrong...

[AttentionKMartShoppers]

YEs yes we know, anti-ID people always attack the implications of ID, as well as the motives of its proponents, while ignoring the implications of evolution, and ignoring the motives of many of its proponents. It's stupid, we knows.

[Jbuza]

The judgement is unconstitutional. No where does the constitution say that a religion cannot be taught. The judgement is a judgement against religion. I know the ID people may cry no, no, but the judge said that he felt it was religion, and he made a ruling against it as a religion. I wonder why he assumed that people would think he is an activist? The constitution plainly says that the government cannot interfere in this, yet the courts do. Simple.

[Kurieuo]

It makes sense not to teach religion in science classes though.

I also stand by my comments a while back in the thread at http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... php?t=1273. From reading that article, it appears the decision was centered prodominantly around the people on the Dover board, not ID in general??

Kurieuo

[BGoodForGoodSake]

It makes sense not to teach religion in science classes though.

I also stand by my comments a while back in the thread at http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... php?t=1273. From reading that article, it appears the decision was centered prodominantly around the people on the Dover board, not ID in general??

Kurieuo

You're correct the ruling was based on the motives of the individuals on the board, not ID in general.

[Yehren]

Said the judge: "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

This is more of an indictment against IDers, than religion per se. However, it establishes that ID is legally a religion or a religious doctrine, which makes it unconstituional to teach in public schools.

[Jbuza]

Said the judge: "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

This is more of an indictment against IDers, than religion per se. However, it establishes that ID is legally a religion or a religious doctrine, which makes it unconstituional to teach in public schools.

Could you plese show in the constitution where it says that is against the law to teach religion?

[ryo dokomi]

it cant be in the constitution because most of the nations major universities started out as seminaries, and nearly all schools had Creation taught along side with the bible as a text book, and school prayer, all up untill 1960's ('63 i think).

[Cook]

It makes sense not to teach religion in science classes though.

I also stand by my comments a while back in the thread at http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... php?t=1273. From reading that article, it appears the decision was centered prodominantly around the people on the Dover board, not ID in general??

Kurieuo

You're correct the ruling was based on the motives of the individuals on the board, not ID in general.

From Page 64 of the ruling:

4. Whether ID is Science

"After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. As we will discuss in more detail below, it is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research."

[Cook]

Also from the ruling (about the board members):

"Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."

The judge was appointed by George Bush in 2002 to be district judge and is a Lutheran and Republican.

[Yehren]

Could you plese show in the constitution where it says that is against the law to teach religion?

It isn't. It's only against the law for the government to do it. Private indivduals can do whatever they like, so long as they aren't relying on government resources.

My daughter, when she was in middle school and high school, did an "at the flagpole" prayer weekly, with her friends, and no one could do anything about it.

She could wear religious items in school, and no one could do anything about that, either. She could even pray, so long as she didn't interfer with class or harass anyone.

And that's how it should be.

[Kurieuo]

The judge has no idea of ID if he made a broad ruling on ID in general. Even if one is amiable towards ID for religious reasons, it is a category error to state that ID is therefore religious. It is for this reason the judge presiding over the case was wrong in declaring ID to be religious, despite rightfully detecting the religious motives of those on the board.

As I stated long before this decision was reached:

As for Dover, PA board of education introducing ID into the science curriculum..., this is not a move by mainstream ID advocates. For example, the Discovery Institute were deeply opposed to what happened there, and even requested the board policy be revoked. They do not want ID introduced into the science education curriculum because it has not matured significantly as a science. They have only been pushing to teach the problems both for and against Darwinian evolution. And they currently only want ID discussed in the higher levels of academia, not within education until it has been more developed.

Yet, it seems obvious you have some trying to use ID as a tool to push their own Creationism motives within Science. Such people are going to do a great deal of damage to ID, and such people are completely outside the mainstream ID movement. Right now ID isn't an alternative to evolution, for as you say no proper scientific theory has been proposed. It is more of a tool, and ID needs to mature first before one ever thinks about it being an option to Darwinian evolution. Creationism is however an alternative, and thus if anyone says ID is an alternative it would seem to me they are confusing ID for Creationism. Clearly Creationism is based more on religious Scripture than Science, and so as such belongs in Theology. ID on the otherhand is not Creationism, and currently cannot be considered an alternative since no scientific models have been put forward.

Kurieuo

[BGoodForGoodSake]

The judge has no idea of ID if he made a broad ruling on ID in general. Even if one is amiable towards ID for religious reasons, it is a category error to state that ID is therefore religious. It is for this reason the judge presiding over the case was wrong in declaring ID to be religious, despite rightfully detecting the religious motives of those on the board.

As I stated long before this decision was reached:

As for Dover, PA board of education introducing ID into the science curriculum..., this is not a move by mainstream ID advocates. For example, the Discovery Institute were deeply opposed to what happened there, and even requested the board policy be revoked. They do not want ID introduced into the science education curriculum because it has not matured significantly as a science. They have only been pushing to teach the problems both for and against Darwinian evolution. And they currently only want ID discussed in the higher levels of academia, not within education until it has been more developed.

Yet, it seems obvious you have some trying to use ID as a tool to push their own Creationism motives within Science. Such people are going to do a great deal of damage to ID, and such people are completely outside the mainstream ID movement. Right now ID isn't an alternative to evolution, for as you say no proper scientific theory has been proposed. It is more of a tool, and ID needs to mature first before one ever thinks about it being an option to Darwinian evolution. Creationism is however an alternative, and thus if anyone says ID is an alternative it would seem to me they are confusing ID for Creationism. Clearly Creationism is based more on religious Scripture than Science, and so as such belongs in Theology. ID on the otherhand is not Creationism, and currently cannot be considered an alternative since no scientific models have been put forward.

Kurieuo

I agree with you Kurieuo with the first point ID is not inherently religious and the judge was erroneous in this judgement.

However why point out the flaws in evolution? Every science has unanswered questions, that's why we need scientists to do the studies and collect the data required to try to solve these problems.

We teach Newtonian physics in highschools knowing that the mathematics are only an aproximation of reality.

We teach chemistry using models of atoms which are nowhere close to the actual structure of the real atoms. Limiting the chemistry to well understood processes and leaving out the fact that much of chemistry was and is trial an error and only afterwards do we come back and try to explain what might be going on.

We tach history in class even though there are missing periods and incomplete fractions which we use to peice it together. With new discoveries every day forcing us to rethink and rewrite it every year.

Astronomy classes still teach children that there are 9 planets and that the Universe started as a big bang. Even though we only recently discovered that the early universe was most likely a perfect liquid and that the universe expanded rather than exploded.

In short how can students understand the drawbacks and puzzles in science if they do not yet have a foundation.

Tell a student that morphological changes most likely happen during development. And that these changes usually lead to death. This information is meaningless to them without an understanding of the theory of evolution first.

[Yehren]

The problem for the Discovery Institute was the accidental release of the Wedge Document. This was intended to be an internal paper only, but it was inadvertently sent out in a press package. Here's the smoking gun...


Governing Goals

To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.

A rather open admission that their motives and organization is religious, not scientific.

[Kurieuo]

The problem for the Discovery Institute was the accidental release of the Wedge Document.

Accidental release? Phillip Johnson released a book on it, and at the time many secularists were declaring it a "secret" strategy to bring in a theocracy, the Chairman of the Discovery Institute's board was Jewish (far from Christian Creationism is disguise). Not to mention there are those on the board who claim to be agnostic.

For more information, I recommend reading The "Wedge Document": So What?

Kurieuo